It was only a few weeks ago that we discussed Good Old Games’ (GOG) return to its roots with the site’s “GOG Preservation Program”. While GOG never stopped selling, you know…
I’m all for platform level comparability (one of my major gripes with xbox BC was that BC of original xbox and 360 titles was implemented per-title and while some were supported most of the library was left behind).
But from a pragmatic perspective my home PC has always been Windows and preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.
I support the principal and encourage the cross platform efforts but its unlikely to mean much to me personally until its bundled in with a plug and play solution like Batocera.
I’ve edited my initial comment to reflect that not everyone will share my priorities.
preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.
You mean software, your hardware is perfectly capable of running Linux+Wine. But again, this is a very personal response, my personal computer is Linux, therefore what GOG is doing means less to me by your own definition, which is why I don’t think it makes any sense to try to bring platform into the table. In fact, since apparently they’re responsible for the DOSBox version that a game uses, and there is a native version of DOSBox for Linux, this means that the decision of the game not being available on Linux is entirely on GOG.
Imagine Valve was financing an emulator, and GOG was compromising themselves to keep a binary updated with the latest version of that emulator whenever problems appeared on the old version, which of them is doing more for the preservation of games? The only difference is that the “emulator” Valve is financing is not the same as the one that GOG is using.
I’m not saying that there isn’t value in what GOG is doing just because it doesn’t affect me, but as is they can only help preserve DOS era games, so investing in DOSBox and hosting the ROMs would be a much more valuable approach (half of it they’re already doing, they do in fact host the ROMs, you just get 50 extra copies of DOSBox in the process). What I’m saying is that I don’t understand why everyone thinks they’re so great for doing what they’re doing, they could be investing in getting wine to run on windows which would be a much better effort for the preservation of games for your platform.
I’m all for platform level comparability (one of my major gripes with xbox BC was that BC of original xbox and 360 titles was implemented per-title and while some were supported most of the library was left behind).
But from a pragmatic perspective my home PC has always been Windows and preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.
I support the principal and encourage the cross platform efforts but its unlikely to mean much to me personally until its bundled in with a plug and play solution like Batocera.
I’ve edited my initial comment to reflect that not everyone will share my priorities.
You mean software, your hardware is perfectly capable of running Linux+Wine. But again, this is a very personal response, my personal computer is Linux, therefore what GOG is doing means less to me by your own definition, which is why I don’t think it makes any sense to try to bring platform into the table. In fact, since apparently they’re responsible for the DOSBox version that a game uses, and there is a native version of DOSBox for Linux, this means that the decision of the game not being available on Linux is entirely on GOG.
Imagine Valve was financing an emulator, and GOG was compromising themselves to keep a binary updated with the latest version of that emulator whenever problems appeared on the old version, which of them is doing more for the preservation of games? The only difference is that the “emulator” Valve is financing is not the same as the one that GOG is using.
I’m not saying that there isn’t value in what GOG is doing just because it doesn’t affect me, but as is they can only help preserve DOS era games, so investing in DOSBox and hosting the ROMs would be a much more valuable approach (half of it they’re already doing, they do in fact host the ROMs, you just get 50 extra copies of DOSBox in the process). What I’m saying is that I don’t understand why everyone thinks they’re so great for doing what they’re doing, they could be investing in getting wine to run on windows which would be a much better effort for the preservation of games for your platform.